


A Shock to the Skin

by lucyrinner



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/M, Less Than 5K, Neighbors, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 16:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4229040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucyrinner/pseuds/lucyrinner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Favorite meet-cutes should always involve Person A almost killing Person B with a shovel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Shock to the Skin

**Author's Note:**

> This is for my giftee, the lovely rraffes on tumblr. I hope you like it- I had fun writing it! The prompt was "Simmons receives the shock of her life" and while I don't think it's quite that big, almost nailing someone with a shovel is close.

 

After looking out the window for the eighth time that hour, Fitz decides that if he hears that shovel scrape across the concrete one more time, he might actually go mad. 

And he swears, any other time, he would’ve gone out to help the poor woman next door shovel her snow, he swears it. But it’s ten below zero without the wind chill and the snow refuses to stop coming down and he only gets so much time with his family during winter break, he really doesn’t want to waste it by abandoning them for this girl that should’ve dressed warmer.

So, because it’s him, ten minutes after his third helping of mashed potatoes, Fitz finds himself pushed out the door into the cold, wearing more layers than necessary and an order from his mother to “be a nice boy and help that girl out, won’t you?”

So with that, he huffs all the way across his own neatly cleared driveway, red shovel over his shoulder, stepping on the fresh snow of covering her still buried driveway.

She doesn’t turn around immediately, not even noticing him over the loud sound her own shovel is making, and Fitz wants to get this over with as soon as possible, so he just begins shoveling along with her, his head down.

He realizes this is a bad idea when she raises her shovel, jumps around and looks like she’s about to attack him with it.

“Blimey!” He yells, jumping back a few feet. She doesn’t relax, only brings it up higher, looking both terrified and slightly psychotic at the same time, mostly because it’s hard to look threatening wearing bright pink earmuffs.

“Who are you?”

“I’m your neighbor, right over there! I wanted to know if you needed any help!”

She still doesn’t bring the shovel down.

“Ms. Fitz lives over there,” she says suspiciously. “You’re not exactly an elderly woman.”

“Yes, my mother, does.”

“Oh, thank god, I thought you were a murderer. For your information, it’s rude to sneak up on people like that.”

“You think a murderer’s gonna come and help you shovel your driveway and then kill ya? I don’t think it’s worth all the work, lass,” he jokes sarcastically, his pulse slowly returning to normal.

She rolls her eyes and lowers her shovel, trying to move a small mound of snow blocking her walkway.

“I really don’t need any help, you know,” her english accent rings out, stern and self assured as she attempts to clear out the pile of flurries by leaning against the shovel, trying to push it.

“Yeah, sure you don't.”

She thinks for a second before agreeing half-heartedly with only a head nod, and continues to shovel without another word. He begins to do the same.

It’s quiet for a while, only the sound of their shovels scraping her driveway and the occasional pant from exertion. He stops after a while, about halfway done with his side when she turns to her.

“What’s your name?”

She has to stop her attack on the pile of snow blocking her mailbox to even hear him.

“Sorry?”

He clears his throat. “Your name,”

“Jemma. Jemma Simmons. You?”

“Well, Leo, but, uh, everyone just calls me Fitz,”

“Well, thanks for helping, Fitz.” she says quietly, eyes avoiding his.

He nods and starts again, but she stays still.

“Leo Fitz. Where do I recognize that name?”

He shrugs. “Well, if you’ve talked to my mum, I’m sure she’s bragged about her smart boy going off to University in America,” he laughs.

“You wouldn’t happen to go to-” she starts to ask, but changes course mid sentence. “Ooh, you’re that Leo Fitz!”

“Well, I wouldn’t consider myself famous or anything-” he starts with a cocky smile, and she cuts him off with another eye roll.

“Professor Weber's mentioned you before!”

He’s surprised when she mentions the name of his physical sciences professor, and vaguely starts to remember the said professor going on and on about a student in his same ‘situation’, only a month younger than him.

“You’re the Simmons girl she kept blathering about?”

She furrows her eyebrows at the comment. “Charmed!”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just- Professor Weber thought we should’ve met right when the term started, I can’t believe it took this long. You live here?”

Jemma laughs a little too loudly at that one. “My aunt and uncle do, and I get to visit this frozen wasteland for Christmas while my parents go galavanting on a cruise.”

“Ah, it’s not that bad. You learn to sleep with a few extra blankets on.” 

“So you live here?”

“My whole life.” he answers.

“How do you like it in America?”

He doesn’t answer, just kinda cocks his head to the side and thinks about it for a second, coming up with nothing.

“Yeah, me too,” she says, smiling at his half sour, half annoyed expression. They both have endured the struggles of supersized cheeseburgers and comments similar to “wow, I love your accent!”

He grins back at her and lifts his shovel up, continuing to push the huge piles of snow to the sides of her driveway, and she does the same- it doesn’t take long until they’re done.

He looks at their work, which isn’t too shabby compared to what she was accomplishing by herself before he came along. It, of course, starts snowing again, and in minutes all their hard work is covered in a small dusting of the flakes. She sighs and he looks at her.

“So…” they both say at the same time, turning to each other. Jemma smiles wider at this.

“Uh, well, if that’s all the help you need, I guess I’ll be going now,” he says, and he can’t help but notice the small frown that appears.

“Yes, I assume so.”

They both stare at each other for a second, unsure and, this time, she opens her mouth first.

“You know, my aunt and uncle are out shopping, probably for a while, and I have some tea if you’d like to, you know, come in. For helping me.” She takes a pause, avoiding his eyes. “I’m usually more eloquent than this.” she laughs, face still red from the cold turning an even brighter scarlet.

He thinks of his mother. Sister. Aunts and uncles and cousins and friends and piled into his house, probably playing board games and arguing about football calls and telling embarrassing childhood stories he’s heard more than a few times.

“Yeah, why not?” he says, throws his shovel down next to hers, and follows her into the cottage, praying he doesn’t do anything to ruin the moment- and falling on the still icy walkway isn’t the first impression he wants to give.

They enter through the kitchen, kicking off their snowy boots and jackets. She rushes toward the table before he can even get out of the doorway, manically clearing papers off the top.

“Whoa, hold on, what are those?” He asks, catching one that had fallen in her haste.

“Oh, they’re nothing much, just ideas,” she blushes.

He examines it closer and sees the intricate design of the tech she’s created and it’s really, really good and he’s enjoying looking at it until she grabs it out of his hands and adds it to the stack.

“You know, if you add some nitrogen to the carbon based molecular transfixer, you might be able to generate more power.” He spouts, reaching for the sketch back.

Jemma stares at him for a second, tilting her head to the side slightly as she contemplates his. Then, scaring the life out of him for the second time that day, she drops all the papers she’s holding on the ground except for the one he’s referring to, running up for Fitz to show her. He points to different sections of the sketch- what he would do, what she could fix, and all of the information’s helpful.

“Thank you. I don’t get a lot of feedback as useful as this.”

She turns before he can see her blush, trying to busy herself with the kettle and mugs, not even bothering to ask whether he takes sugar or milk. He wonders if his family wonders why shoveling a driveway that’s barely ten feet long is taking hours with two of them, or if they’ve simply forgotten him in the haze of food and conversation. Either way, he’s enjoying his time away far more than he thought he would.

They sit on the couch and flip through channels once the tea’s done, finally landing on a documentary that becomes background noise to more of their science talk. and she doesn’t even realize it’s 8 at night on January 1st and feels a little bad for keeping this stranger held hostage in her house.

“No, really, I didn’t mind!” He says for the twentieth time when she all but pushes him out the door, feeling embarrassed enough without his repeated reassurance.

She’s only in a light sweater when she goes out onto her doorstep with him to say goodbye, shivering already. Despite spending hours together talking about everything under the sun, they’re quiet now. Their work on the driveway is completely undone- snow’s falling even quicker now and it catches in her hair. 

“Jemma, why aren’t your aunt and uncle home?” He asks.

“They’re out, at a party with some friends. It’s just me tonight.” She tries to punctuate this sentence with an overly enthusiastic grin, but it ends up falling flat and spinster-ish and he starts looking at her like the poor, abandoned puppy she really isn’t.

The invitation to his house is on the tip of his tongue and it’s about to come out when he thinks of his sister’s inevitable interrogation and his Uncle Richard’s inappropriate comments at the table and his cousin Alan’s obsession with some anime show, so he stops himself before he says anything he can’t take back.

“I’ll see you around?” She asks.

He nods, lingering in the doorway for longer than necessary as his brain tries to say

Fitz lingers for a couple seconds, then pulls away, walking down her driveway, making boot prints in the snow as he trudges back up his yard, pausing to look back with a small smile. The minute he walks inside, his family won’t shut up about the pretty english girl next door that he sure spent a lot of time with, and Uncle Richard won’t stop wagging his eyebrows in his direction.

She goes back inside and shuts the door behind her, not quite knowing what to do with herself. But later, when he parents call from some exotic country to ask how her day was, she glances outside to her once again covered driveway and smiles.

* * *

A year later, Christmas at the Academy was dying down. She’d decorated their dorm room extravagantly- lights still strung up everywhere, real poinsettias drooping and getting darker by the day in every windowsill, and the Bing Crosby version of ‘White Christmas’ still stuck in Fitz’s head.

Money’s tight, so they stay home. It’s not as bad as it could’ve been- he’s not stuck inside a miniscule room with childhood memories overflowing his closet, and she isn’t back at her aunt and uncle’s, so they can’t complain. They have a fire going and no classes in the foreseeable future, so while he misses family, he can’t say he doesn’t like the peace that comes with celebrating the holidays with only one other person and a television always set to BBC.

They Skype Jemma’s parents first, and they’re in a hotel somewhere near the Andes. Her mum won’t stop admiring Fitz’s new haircut and Jemma has to give her the look more than a few times before her parents finally sign off. They do his family’s next, and his mother won’t stop asking Jemma questions about their diet and the cold and if they’re stocked up on tea in case the heat goes out and Fitz finds himself missing her endless nagging about their wellbeing.

This time it’s a documentary about the French Revolution used for background noise, and they aren’t exactly talking about their experiments at the lab. Her forehead is touching his, both smiling into every touch, every moment.

“Happy new year, Jem,” he whispers in her ear, sprinkling kisses everywhere he can reach- across her nose, on her forehead, both cozy under blankets. 

She sighs and smiles back to him, warm and comfortable, and the furthest thing from her mind is the extreme blizzard going on outside.

“Happy new year, Fitz.”


End file.
